"A Definite Must If You Want to Waste Your Money!"

Let me start off by saying this is my first connection with the great CastleVania series and let me say that this has to be the worst Gameboy game, EVER! Not only are you restricted from saving, despite this being a cartridge game AND one that isn’t very detailed. While it’s short, it’s hard, it’s the only reason it took me more than 2 days to finish.

You’re supposedly some idiot named Christopher who must have some advanced yet restricted Cerebral Palsy; I don’t exactly know my self. It just seems that his jumping, rope-climbing and whipping skills aren’t the best out there. Does this game have no plot, you need to get your plot from the N64 CastleVania for a better view of it, but even it’s own sound and music is terrible.

Gameplay ---3/10--- This game is so bad it could make you cry, I hate this game more than AOL, the entire Final Fantasy series, and Superman64 combined! Well, maybe just AOL and Final Fantasy, Superman64 is pretty bad. But it’s so frustrating, here, I’ll give you a layout of a scenario when playing this game: Okay, a rolling eye is headed toward you, and all you have is a whip. A candle is above and you’re on a bridge. What do you do? You can:A) Whip the rolling eye to destroy it. B) Try to jump over it. C) Jump and whip the candle. Well, that seems pretty simple, so, have your choice? Here are your results: A) You whip the rolling eyeball and successfully destroyed it. Good work, it seems-wait! Uh oh, you died, and bat came down and killed you because you didn’t move so the bat somehow struck you and killed you. And even if you did move, since you were on a bridge, the eye blew up, collapsed the bridge and you would have fell to your doom anyway. B) You jump over it, but an unforeseen bird comes down and kills you. C) You jump over it, great, you not only mashed the candle (a coin was inside) but you killed the bat and the bird in the process! But wait, Newton’s law says you have to come down because of gravity! You fall on the eye and die.

See what I mean? There’s almost no way out! Enemies can corner you so easily! Oh, and that brings me to something else, the low amount of enemies. There are only four bosses, around 5 enemies, and only 4 different ways to die, it’s really pathetic. The detail in this game is very, very low.

Controls ---1/10--- The controls are so bad I wanted to scream, and I did, and I was in the car with my parents driving and they grounded me for a week. But the screaming helped, I don’t know how, but I needed to, the controls were that bad. Here are your controls, now, don’t get confused as the extreme &lt;/sarcasm&gt; amount of controls are insanely hard for anyone to memorize… Up- Crawling up a rope Down- Squatting Left- Move left Right- Move right A-Button- Jump B-Button- Whip Start- Pause Select-Nothing Are you as confused as I am&lt;/sarcasm&gt;? Pokemon and Zelda Gameboy games must have 25 times the amount of control complexity. But despite the little challenge offered in the game’s many controls, there’s the fact that you’re reactions are so bad, slow and obnoxious to everything it can’t get any worse. While flaming balls are coming right at you faster than a Sumo wrestler in a lunch line, Christopher must be thinking: were just moving right along here, no need to hurry, checking out the sites, gee I wish I had my camera for the beautiful cemetery.

Sound ---2/10--- Awful, I don’t want to talk about it.

Music ---5/10--- All right, I’m giving it a 5 ONLY because I like the first stage’s music. The music in that level still only deserves an 8 rating; every other song is pretty obnoxious or has no tune. I can’t put the music into any category. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening had at good symphony music, Star Ocean: the Second Story had classical orchestra, and at least Final Fantasy had a few excellent band songs, but CastleVania? Oh no, CastleVania has pre-Atari music, and that means it’s worse than having no music, it’s a techno song without feeling (and that speaks volumes about how low quality it is).

Graphics ---3/10--- Bad for even one of the older Gameboy games. At first I thought the squatting men were Werewolves. I mean none of them have realistic shapes, at least Wario had identifiable people, but Konami had to give the go-ahead to make Christopher look like a monkey standing, the birds to look like Flying Squirrels, and the ninjas to look like topless drunk women. AHHHHH is the only identifiable word that truly describes it.

Buy/Rent? Neither. Don’t even touch the box, if you do follow the old biblical proverb: If you’re eye causes you to sin, cut it out. Do so, cut off your hands, I will after I finish typing this review. I mean, if this game was any bigger I’d be using it as toilet paper. Believe me, I’m known as the game’s defender too.